The best of my education has come from my soul…my tuition fee is a meditative prayer and once in a while, fasting. You do not need to know very much to start with, if you know the way to your heart. What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. It is sufficient for one to know that one needs God; and that behind this Universe God simply is and will be forever, and will in some way hear one’s call. In the practical assurance of these empirical facts, in the blessedness of their mere acknowledgement as given, is possessed all the peace and power one craves. The floodgates of the religious life are opened, and the full currents can pour through. Get that peace of God which passes understanding, and the questions of the understanding will cease from puzzling and pedantic scruples be at rest. Surely, if the Universe is reasonable (and we must believe that it is so), it must be susceptible, potentially at least, of being reasoned out to the last drop without residuum. The aim is to shadow forth a sort of process by which spirit, emerging from its beginnings and exhausting the whole circle of finite experience in its sweep, shall at last return and possess itself as its own object at the climax of its career. This climax is the religious consciousness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

It is essential to make a clear that none should take to this Quest in order to follow or depend on some particular being, or to gain certain mystic experiences, for if one is disappointed in the being or frustrated in reaching the experiences, one will be inclined to abandon the Quest. No!—one should take to it for its own sake, because it is immeasurably worthwhile and because its rewards in improved character and developed understanding are sufficient in themselves to pay for one’s effort. If the Quest helps one to become aware of, and to eradicate, bad faults in oneself, in one’s outlook on life and in one’s approach to others, it has justified itself. Even if the spiritual consciousness fails to show itself, or to show itself often enough to please one, one has still had one’s money’s worth. The time will come when values will change, when ambitions, powers, possessions, and acquisitions will be put back into their proper places, when their tyranny over the will and the feelings will be put to an end. The is the character of the cognitive element in all the mental life we know, and we have no reason to suppose that the character will ever change. On the contrary, it is more than probable that to the end of time our power of moral and volitional response to the nature of things will be the deepest organ of communication therewith we shall ever possess. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

In every being that is real there is something external to, and sacred from, the grasp of every other. God’s being is sacred from ours. To co-operate with one’s creation by the best and rightest response seems all he wants of us. In such co-operation with his purposes, not in any chimerical speculative conquest of him, not in any theoretic drinking of him up, must possess the real meaning of our destiny. This is nothing new. All beings know it at those rare moments when the soul sobers herself, and leaves off her chattering and protesting and insisting about this formula or that. In the silence of our theories we then seem to listen, and to hear something like the pulse of Being beat; and it is borne in upon us that the mere turning of the character, the dumb willingness to suffer and to serve this Universe, is more than all theories about it put together. When this inner work is sufficiently advanced, certain traits of character will either advance in strength or appear for the first time. Among them are patience, goodwill, stability, self-control, peacefulness, and equableness. Those who are willing to practise the philosophic discipline may realize their spiritual nature for themselves and not have to depend upon hearsay for the knowledge of its existence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

It can be shown that the disciplines of philosophy offer much in return, that to the person who seriously feels one’s life needs not mere amendment but raising to a finer level there are encouraging experiences and beautiful intuitions awaiting one. It is a new and different, a superior and fuller, a self-fulfilling kind of experience. A life so full of exalted purpose, so inspired by a tremendous ideal, cannot be a dull or unhappy one. The toil of the quest is hard and long. If it deters anyone from starting on it, let one remember that the rewards along the way, even apart from the grand one at the end, are sufficiently worthwhile to repay one for all one is likely to do. Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars. The reward of all the years of long arduous striving will be their happy justification; the rich blessing of an infinite strength within one will pay off the failures and weaknesses of a past self which had to be fought and conquered. Your job gives your authority. Your behavior earns you respect. During times of war and suffering, the spiritual Quest demonstrates its value by the inner support which it gives and the unquenchable faith it bestows. The forces of evil will be checked; the good will triumph in the end, as always. God’s love for all remains what it ever shall be—the best thing in life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

Nonetheless, the ways of obtaining power, prestige and possessions differ in different cultures. They may come by right of inheritance or they may come from the individual’s possession of certain qualities appreciated by one’s cultural group, such as courage, cunning, capacity to cure the unwell or communicate with supernatural powers, mental instability, and the like. They may be acquired also by extraordinary or successful activities, achieved on the basis of given qualities or through the favor of fortuitous circumstances. In our culture inheritance of position and wealth certainly plays a role. If, however, power, prestige and possession have to be acquired by the individual’s own efforts one is compelled to enter into competitive struggles with others. From its economic center competition radiates into all other activities and permeates love, social relations and play. Therefore competition is a problem for everyone in our culture, and it is not at all surprising to find it an unfailing center of neurotic conflicts. In our culture neurotic competitiveness differs from the normal in three respects. First, the neurotic constantly measures oneself against others, even in situations which do not call for it. Although striving to surpass others is essential in all competitive situations, the neurotic measures oneself against person who are in no way potential competitors and who have no goal in common with one. The question as to who is the more intelligent, attractive, popular, is indiscriminately applied to everyone. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

One’s feelings toward life can be compared to that of a jockey in a race, for whom only one thing matters—whether one is ahead of the others. This attitude leads necessarily to a loss or impairment of real interest in any cause. It is not the content of what one is doing that matters so much as the question of how much success, impression, prestige will be gained by it. The neurotic may be aware of this attitude of measuring oneself against others, or one may do it automatically without being aware of doing it. One is scarcely ever fully aware of the role it plays for one. The second difference from normal competitiveness is that neurotic’s ambition is not only to accomplish more than others, or to have greater success than they, but to be unique and exceptional. While one may think in the comparative one’s aim is always in the superlative. One may be perfectly aware of being driven by relentless ambition. More frequently, however, one either represses one’s ambition entirely or partly covers it. In the latter cases one may believe, for example, that one cares not for success, but only for the cause one is working for; or one may believe that one does not want to be in the limelight, but only wants to pull the strings behind the scene. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

 Or one may admit that one was once ambitions, as some period in one’s life—that as a boy one had fantasies of being Christ or a second Napoleon, or saving the World from war, that as a girl she wanted to marry the Duke of Sussex—but will declare that since then one’s ambition has subsided altogether. One may even complain that it has receded too much, and that it would be desirable to recapture some of one’s old ambition. If one has repressed one’s ambition entirely one is likely to be convinced that ambition has always been quite alien to one. Only when a few protective layers have been loosened by the analyst will one recall having had fantasies of a grandiose nature, or thoughts that flashed through one’s mind of being the very best in one’s field or of being exceptionally clever or handsome, or having caught oneself feeling amazed that any woman could fall in love with another man when he was around, and, even retrospectively, resenting it. In most cases, however, ignorant of the powerful role ambition plays in one’s reactions, one does not ascribe any particular significant to such thoughts. Such an ambition will sometimes be focused upon one particular goal: intelligence, or attractiveness, or achievements of some kind, or morals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Sometimes, however, the ambition is not centered on a definite goal, but spreads over all the person’s activities. One has to be the best in every field one comes in touch with. One may want to be at the same time a great inventor and an outstanding physician and an unequaled musician. A woman may want to be not only the first in her particular field of work, but also a perfect housewife and a best-dressed woman. Adolescents of this type may find it hard to choose or pursue any one career, because choosing one means renouncing another, or at least renouncing part of their favorite interest and activities. For most persons it would be difficult indeed to master architecture, surgery and the violin. Also such adolescents may begin their work with expectations that are excessive and fantastic: to paint like Rembrandt, to build a mansion like Sarah Winchester, to write plays like Shakespeare, to be about to make an accurate blood count as soon as starting to work in the laboratory. Since their excessive ambition leads them to expect too much they fall short in their achievements, and are thus easily discouraged and disappointed and are soon induced to give up their endeavors and start something else. Many gifted persons scatter their energies this way during their entire lives. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Some gifted people have indeed great potentialities for achieving something in various fields, but by being interested and eventually ambitions in all of them they are incapable of consistent pursuit of any goal; in the end they achieve nothing and let their fine faculties go to waste. Whether or not there is awareness of the ambition there is always great sensitivity to any frustration of it. Even a success may be felt as a disappointment, because it does not quite measure up to high-flown expectations. For example, a success with a scientific paper or book may nevertheless be a disappointment because it does not set the Thames on fire, but arouses only a limited interest. A person of this type after having passed a difficult examination will discount one’s success by pointing out that others, too, have passed. This persistent tendency toward disappointment is one of the reasons why persons of this type cannot enjoy success. Other reasons I shall discuss later. Naturally they are also extremely sensitive to any criticism. Many persons have never produced more than their first book or their first picture, because they felt too deeply discouraged by even mild criticism. Many latent neuroses first became manifest at the criticism of a superior or the incurrence of a failure, although the criticism or the failure may in itself have been trivial, or at any rate quite out of proportion to the resulting mental trouble. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

The third difference from normal competition is the implicit hostility in the neurotic’s ambitions, one’s attitude that “no one but I shall be beautiful, capable, successful.” Hostility is inherent in every intense competition, since the victory of one of the competitors implies the defeat of the other. There is, in fact, so much destructive competition in an individualistic culture that as an isolated feature one hesitates to call it a neurotic characteristic. It is almost a cultural pattern. In the neurotic person, however, the destructive aspect is stronger than the constructive: it is more important for one to see others defeated than to succeed oneself. More precisely, the neurotic-ambitious person acts as if it were more important for one to defeat others than succeed. In reality one’s own success is of the utmost important to one; but since one has strong inhibitions toward success—as we shall see later—the only way that remains open to one is to be, or at least to feel, superior: to tear down the others, to bring them down to one’s own level, or rather beneath it. In the competitive struggles of our culture it is often expedient to try to damage a competitor in order to enhance one’s own position or glory or to keep down a potential rival. The neurotic, however, is driven by a blind, indiscriminate and compulsive urge to disparage others. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

One may unknowingly disparage others even though one realizes that the others would do one no actual harm, or even when their defeat is distinctly counter to one’s own interest. One’s feeling may be described as an articulate conviction that “only one can succeed,” which is only another way of expressing the idea that “no one but I shall succeed.” There may be an enormous amount of emotional intensity be hind one’s destructive impulses. For example, a man who was writing a play was thrown into a blind fury when he heard that a friend of his was also working on a play. This impulse to defeat or frustrate the efforts of others may be seen in many relationships. A child with excessive ambition may become impelled by a wish to defeat all one’s parents’ efforts on his or her behalf. If the parents press one in matters of deportment and social success one will develop a kind of behavior which is socially scandalous. If they concentrate their efforts one one’s intellectual development one may develop such strong inhibitions toward learning that one appears to be feebleminded. I recall two young patients brought to me who were suspected of being feebleminded, although later they proved to be very capable and intelligent. The fact that they were motivated by a wish to defeat their parents became apparent in their attempts to act in the same way toward the psychoanalyst. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

One of them pretended for some time not to understand me, so that I became insecure in my judgment of her intelligence, until I recognized that she had been playing the same game with me that she had used against her parents and teachers. Both youngsters had vigorous ambitions, but at the beginning of their treatment the ambition was completely submerged in destructive impulses. The same attitude may appear toward lessons or toward any kind of treatment. When taking lessons or undergoing treatments it is to the person’s interest to profit from them. For a neurotic person of this type, however, or more accurately speaking, for the competitive part in one, it becomes more important to defeat the efforts or thwart the possible success of the teacher or physician. And if one can achieve this goal by merely demonstrating in one’s own person that nothing has been achieved, one is willing to pay even the price of remaining ill or ignorant, thereby demonstrating to others that they are no good. It is needless to add that this process works unconsciously. In one’s conscious mind such a person will be convinced that the teacher or the physician is factually incapable, or is not the right person for one. Thus a patient of this type will be inordinately afraid that the analyst will succeed with one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

One will go to any length to defeat the analyst’s efforts, even though in doing so one obviously defeats one’s own ends. Not only will one mislead the analyst or withhold important information, but one may even stay in the same condition or dramatically become worse, as long as one possibly can. One will not tell the analysts of any improvements, or if one does it will be only reluctantly, or in a complaining fashion, or one will credit an improvement or any gain in insight to some outside factor, such as a change in temperature, the fact that one has taken aspirin, something be has read. One will not follow any lead of the analyst, thus attempting to prove that the latter is definitely wrong. Or one will bring up as a finding of one’s own a suggestion of the analyst which one had originally rejected with violence. This latter behavior can often be observed in ordinary daily affairs; it constitutes the dynamics of unconscious plagiarism, and many battles for priority have such a psychological basis. Such a person cannot stand the idea that anyone but he or she should have a new thought. One will decidedly disparage any suggestion that is not one’s own. For instance, if it is recommended by a person whom one is competing with at the same time, one will dislike or refuse a movie or a book for that reason alone. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

When all these reactions are brought closer to awareness in the process of analysis the neurotic may have open outbreaks of rage after a good interpretation: impulses to smash something in the office or to thrash someone’s BMW, or physically assault someone while the are not looking, or to shout insulting remarks at the analyst are common. Or after some problems have been clarified one will point out immediately that there are still many problems unsolved. Even if one has improved considerably and recognizes this fact intellectually, one fights against feeling any gratitude. There are other factors involved in the phenomenon of ingratitude, such as the fear of incurring obligations, but one important element in it is frequently this humiliation which the neurotic feels for having to give someone credit for something. There is much anxiety connected with the defeating impulses because of the fact that the neurotic person automatically assumes that others will feel just as much hurt and vindictive after a defeat as one does oneself. Therefore one is anxious about hurting others and keeps the extent of one’s defeating tendencies from awareness by believing and insisting that they are factually justified. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

One can see from these examples how the unconscious personality build itself up. This is called the sensitizing effect of a preserving emotion. In dealing with criminal cases we can make use of the sensitizing effect, and then we arrange the critical stimulus words in such a way that they occur more or less within the presumable range of preservation. This can be done in order to increase the effect of the critical stimulus words. With a suspected culprit as a test person, the critical stimulus words are words which have a direct bearing upon the crimes. The test person was a man about 25 years of age, a decent individual, one of my normal test persons. I had of course to experiment with a great number of normal people before I could draw conclusions from pathological material. If you want to know what it was that disturbed this man, you simply have to read the words that caused the turbulences and fit them together. Then you get a nice story. Everyone knows nowadays most people have complexes. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes have us. The existence of complexes throws serious doubt on the naïve assumption of the unity of consciousness, which is equated with “psyche,” and on the supremacy of the will. Every constellation of a complex postulates a disrupted and the intentions of the will are impeded or made impossible. Even memory is often noticeable affected, as we have seen.  #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

The complex must therefore be a psychic factor which, in terms of energy, possesses a value that sometimes exceeds that of our conscious intentions, otherwise such disruptions of the conscious order would not be possible at all. And in fact, an active complex puts us momentarily under a state of duress, of compulsive thinking and acting, for which under certain conditions the only appropriate term would be the judicial concept of diminished responsibility. The subject can only control one’s mind to a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be suppressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength. Personality fragments undoubtedly have their own consciousness, but whether such small psychic fragments as complexes are also capable of a consciousness of their own is a still unanswered question. I must confess that this question has often occupied my thoughts, for complexes behave like devils and seem to delight in playing impish ticks. They slip just the wrong word into one’s mouth, they make one forget the name of the person one is about to introduce, they cause a tickle in the throat when the softest passage is being played on the piano at a concert, they make the tiptoeing latecomer trip over a chair with a resounding crash. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

They bid us congratulate the mourners at a burial instead of condoling with them, they are instigators of all those maddening things attributed to mischievousness of the of an object. They are the actors in our dreams, whom we confront so powerlessly; they are the elfin beings so aptly characterized in Danish folklore by the story of the clergyman who tried to teach the Lord’s prayers to two elves. They took the greatest pains to repeat the words after him correctly, but at the very first sentence they could not avoid saying, “Our Father, who are not in Heaven.” As one might expect on theoretical grounds, these impish complexes are unteachable. To these types of people, life is a struggle of all against all, and the devil take the hindmost. One’s attitude is sometimes quite apparent, but more often it is covered with a veneer of suave politeness, fairmindedness and good fellowship. This front can represent a Machiavellian concession to expediency. As a rule, however, it is a composite of pretenses, genuine feelings, and neurotic needs. A desire to make others believe he or she is a good fellow may be combined with a certain amount of actual benevolence as long as there is no question in anybody’s mind that one is in command. There may be elements of a neurotic need for affection and approval, put to the service of aggressive goals. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

We must realize that this behavior is much prompted by basic anxiety. The component of fear is so evident. One’s needs stem fundamentally from one’s feeling that the World is an arena where, in the Darwinian sense, only the fittest survive and the strong annihilate the weak. What contribute most to survival depends largely on the civilization in which the person lives; but in any case, a callous pursuit of self-interest is the paramount law. Hence, one’s primary need becomes one of control over others. Variations in the means of control are infinite. There may be an outright exercise of power, there may be indirect manipulation through oversolicitousness or putting people under obligation. One may even prefer to be the power behind the throne. The approach may be by way of the intellect, implying a belief that by reasoning or foresight everything can be managed. One’s particular form of control depends partly on one’s natural endowments. Partly, it represents a fusion of conflicting trends. If, for instance, the person inclines at the same time toward detachment one will shun any direct domination because it brings one into too close contact with others. Indirect methods will also be preferred if there is much hidden need for affection. If this wish is to be the power behind the throne, the presence of sadistic trends is indicated, since it implies using others of attainment of one’s goals. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

The simplest form of schizophrenia, of the splitting of the personality, is paranoia, the classic persecution-mania of the “persecuteur  persecute.” It consists in a simple doubling of the personality, which in milder cases is still held together by the identity of the two ego. The person strikes us at first as completely normal; one may hold office, be a TV news anchor, be in a lucrative position, we suspect nothing. We converse normally with one, and at some point, something triggers a piercing look full of abysmal mistrust and inhuman fanaticism meets from one’s eyes. One has become a hunted, dangerous animal, surrounded by invisible enemies: the other ego has risen to the surface. What has happened? Obviously at some time or other the idea of being a persecuted victim gained the upper hand, became autonomous, and formed a second subject which at times completely replaces the healthy ego. It is characteristic that neither of the two subjects can fully experience the other, although the two personalities are not separated by a belt of unconsciousness as they are in an hysterical dissociation of the personality. They know each other intimately, but they have no valid arguments against one another. The healthy ego cannot counter the affectivity of the other, for at least half its affectivity has gone over into its opposite number. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

The healthy ego is, so to speak, paralysed. This is the beginning of that schizophrenic apathy which can be observed in paranoid dementia. The person can assure you with the greatest indifference: “I am the triple owner of the World, the finest Turkey, the Lorelei, Germania and Helvetia of exclusively sweet butter and Naples and I must supply the whole World with macaroni.” All this without a blush, and with no flicker of a smile. Here there are countless subject and no central ego to experience anything and react emotionally. If the neurotic has a strongly disparaging attitude one has difficulties in forming any optimistic opinion that is authentic, taking any beneficial stand, or making any constructive decision. A good opinion on some person or matter may be shattered by the slightest negative remark that anyone makes, because it takes only a trifle to stir up one’s disparaging impulses. All these destructive impulses involved in the neurotic striving for power, prestige and possession enter into the competitive struggle. In the general competitive struggle that takes place in our culture even the normal person is likely to show these tendencies, but in the neurotic person such impulses become important in themselves, regardless of any disadvantage or suffering they may bring one. The ability to humiliate or exploit or cheat other people becomes for one a triumph of superiority, if one fails defeat. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

Much of the rage shown by the neurotic if one is incapable of taking advantage of others is due to such a feeling of defeat. If an individualistic competitive spirit prevails in any society it is bound to impair the relations between the genders, unless the spheres of life pertaining to man and woman are strictly separated. Neurotic competitiveness, however, produces even greater havoc than the average, because of its destructive character. While no one may free oneself from every form of outward suffering, all beings have the power to free themselves from mental suffering, but it takes a strong and healthy mind. How weak, how helpless is the being who oneself is alone. How strong, how supported is the being who is both oneself and more than oneself. In the one, there is only the petty little ego as the motor of force; in the other there is also the infinite Universal being (God). Any being may detect the presence of divinity within oneself, if one will patiently work through the course prescribed by authoritative books or a competent guide. It is not the prerogative of spiritual genius alone to detect it. It is only in the rational balanced growth of the mind and the sympathetic heart, the disciplined body and the tranquilized nerves, the philosophic reflectiveness, spiritual peace, and ultra-spiritual insight, that a being arrives at last at maturity and normality and thus becomes really sane. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

Be present, O Lord, to our prayers, and protect us by day and night; that in all successive changes of times we may ever be strengthened by Thine unchangeableness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, at evening, and morning, and noonday, we humbly beseech Thy Majesty, that Thou wouldst drive from our hearts the darkness of sins, and makes us to come to the true Light, which is Christ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Now, behold, I say unto you, if I had not been born of God I should not have known these things; but God has, by mouth of his holy Angels, made these things known unto me, not of any worthiness of myself,” reports Alma 36.5. O Lord, God, the Life of mortals, the Light of the faithful, the Strength of those who labour, and the Repose of the dead; grant us a tranquil night free from all disturbance; that after an interval of quiet sleep, we may, by Thy bounty, at the return of light, be endued with activity from the Holy Spirit, and enabled in security to render thanks to Thee. We render Thee thanksgiving upon thanksgiving, Lord our God, Father of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, by all means, at all times, in all places. For Thou hast sheltered, assisted, supported, and led us on through the time past of our life, and brought us to this hour. And we pray and beseech Thee, Or Good and Loving, grant us to pass this holy day, and all the time of our life, without sin; with all joy, healthy, salvation, sanctification, and fear of Thee. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

However, all envy, all fear, all temptation, all the working of Satan, all conspiracy of wicked beings, do Thou drive away, O God, from us, and from Thy Holy Church. Supply us with things food and profitable. Whereinsoever we have sinned against Thee, in word, or deed, or thought, be Thou pleased in Thy love and goodness to pass it over; and forsake us not, O God, who hope in Thee, neither lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one, and from his works, by the grace, and compassion, and benignity of Thine Only-begotten son. The day of Resurrection has dawned upon us, the day of true light and life, wherein Christ, the Life of believers, arose from the dead. Let us give abundant thanks and praise to God, that while we solemnly celebrate the day of our Lord’s Resurrection, He may be pleased to bestow on us quite peace and special gladness; so that being protected from morning to night by His favouring mercy, we may rejoice in the gift of our Redeemer. In this hour of this day fill us, O Lord, with Thy mercy, that rejoicing throughout the whole day we may take delight in thy praise; through Jesus Christ our Lord. If the quest does nothing more than save one in one’s darkest hours from total submergence in the all-prevalent Worldliness, it has done enough. The quest can give stability to the feelings, support to the mind, defense against the pettiness and the evil of the World. The transformations effected by this inner work seem, when stabilized, to be a natural maturity. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Now Go and find your Dream Home!

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